Tom Peters likes to say organizations need mavericks. Germans, rightly or wrongly, have a conformist image - supposedly a country with no mavericks, where innovation is dying.
I have felt that Dr. Hasso Plattner of SAP was a maverick - and chose to move to Silicon Valley rather than run the business from Walldorf. I also believe SAP has benefited over the last decade from that burst of independent thinking.
In the last week, almost by coincidence, I saw three more angles on German "maverick" behavior.
a) USA today had an article on how Juergen Klinsmann, a god in Germany because of his soccer successes, is now coaching the German national team by commuting from Los Angeles - and how unpopular that is in Germany. His response: "who cares?"
b) CNET News has an article on the City of Mannheim and their move to Open source, not for cost, but for "Open Standards". Open standards in a conformist nation?
c) Finally I saw these photographs of German trucks (click on each to enlarge)
We even have a German playing basketball for the Dallas Mavericks - so much for conformance!
